aside FBI Robert Mueller Has Made New Court Filing Connecting Dots Between Russia And Trump

The FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller III who is leading the Trump-Russia probe has just entered into the court system on the 28th of March 2018, a new court filing related to the London attorney Alex van der Zwaan who has pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with deputy Trump campaign manager Rick Gates and a person identified in the document only as “Person A.” Washington Post reporters think that “Person A” is a former Ukraine-based aide to Gates and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort named Konstantin Kilimnik. I am not as convinced that Person “A”is Mr. Kilimnik but he does fit the description as provided by Mr. Gates.

I’ve had my eye on J. D. Gordon, a former Pentagon official on Mr. Trump’s national security team, who had met with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, at a time when Mr. Gordon was helping keep hawkish language on Russia’s conflict with Ukraine out of the Republican National Convention party’s platform around July 2016.

Included in the new FBI filing, is allegedly some new information pertaining to the republican Donald Trump’s former campaign Paul Manafort, claiming that he had been in contact in 2016 with a now identified Russian agent, Konstantin Kilimnik. He had worked for the U.S.-based International Republican Institute out of Moscow for almost 10 years before he was forced out. Mr. Kilimnik was reportedly forced out of his job because of suspicion about his ties to Russia around 2004-2005. He then started working with Paul Manafort around 2005.

“According to its “About Us” page on its website, the organization International Republican Institute (IRI) is a “nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that is committed to freedom and democracy worldwide by helping political parties to become more issue-based and responsive, assisting citizens to participate in government planning, and working to increase the role of marginalized groups in the political process –- including women and youth.”

The IRI has been funded by the U.S. government and it has been staffed with distinguished board members like U.S. Senator John McCain.

As per an earlier 3/8/17 Chris Bucher of Heavy.com report:

Excerpts:

“In an interview February 22, (Konstantin V.) Kilimnik said that he and Manafort would meet “every couple months” during the election (2016), but denied the meetings having anything to do with Russia. Instead, he said that he was briefing Manafort on matters in Ukraine.”

“Kilimnik said in the interview that even though the two had been meeting, he was never “formally advising” Manafort during the election campaign. He reiterated to the Wall Street Journal n January that he has no relationship with the government in Russia or its intelligence officials.”

Oleg Deripaska/ Paul Manafort

On March 28, 2018, Aaron Blake of the Washington Post penned the following report, “Mueller just drew his most direct line to date between the Trump campaign and Russia”

Excerpts:

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation just drew what appears to be its most direct line to date between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

That line is drawn in a new court filing related to the upcoming sentencing of London attorney Alex van der Zwaan. Van der Zwaan has pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with deputy Trump campaign manager Rick Gates and a person identified in the document only as “Person A.” Person A appears to be a former Ukraine-based aide to Gates and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort named Konstantin Kilimnik.

Here’s the paragraph:

Fourth, the lies and withholding of documents were material to the Special Counsel’s Office’s investigation. That Gates and Person A were directly communicating in September and October 2016 was pertinent to the investigation. Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agents assisting the Special Counsel’s Office assess that Person A has ties to Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016. During his first interview with the Special Counsel’s Office, van der Zwaan admitted that he knew of that connection, stating that Gates told him Person A was a former Russian Intelligence Officer with GRU.

That Person A has had ties to Russian intelligence is not terribly surprising. Kilimnik’s personal history has been examined extensively by the media, including The Washington Post. He has denied being involved in Russian intelligence, but he served in the Russian military and attended a Russian military foreign language university (where he learned English and Swedish) that is seen as a breeding ground for intelligence agents.

“The other new piece here is that Mueller’s team says Gates described Person A (again, apparently Kilimnik) as “a former Russian Intelligence Officer with GRU.” (GRU is Russia’s military intelligence organization.) So according to van der Zwaan, Gates talked openly about Person A’s ties to Russian intelligence. Kilimnik told The Post in June that he has “no relation to the Russian or any other intelligence service.” Mueller is now apparently directly disputing that using Gates’s own words, via van der Zwaan.”

“Ever since his guilty plea last month, van der Zwaan’s relation to the case has been unclear. We know he is the son-in-law of a prominent Russian Ukrainian banker (Alfa Bank), but as with other figures in this case, we have no idea why he lied to investigators. Was it an honest mistake, or was he covering something up?”

“The new van der Zwaan filing doesn’t shed a whole bunch of new light on that, but it does suggest that Mueller views Kilimnik as a possible link between the Trump campaign and Russia, and that he believes Kilimnik hasn’t been forthcoming about his ties to Russian intelligence. We also know that Manafort had been in contact with Kilimnik during the 2016 campaign, meeting him at least twice and asking him to provide private briefings about the 2016 election to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is closely tied to Vladimir Putin.”

“Whether that’s pertinent to the broader collusion investigation is something we’ll have to wait to find out. There is so much Mueller knows that we simply don’t; this could be the tip of an iceberg or an extraneous fact. But those six words do seem at least a little conspicuous.”

Gronda, the plot thickens. We have speculated that the President has seen the writing on the wall, which is why he empowered a willing Rep. Devin Nunes to discredit or create questions about the FBI as well as the even more intense pushback. As we have said all along, Robert Mueller’s competence and silence is unnerving the hell out of the tempestuous President. Keith